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December 29th, 2007

Experiments in Geocoding

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to try my hand at geocoding — attaching latitude and longitude (coordinate) data directly to the EXIF metadata in photographs so they can be precisely positioned on a map.

The easiest way to do this is to use a camera with a built-in GPS. Unfortunately, that’s still a pretty rare feature in cameras, and comes at a hefty premium. Because most people aren’t interested in the feature and never will be, it’s not likely to become commonplace any time soon. Some day we’ll all have high-quality cell phone cameras with native GPS — the Nokia N95 is the current front-runner, and I think it’s a safe bet the coming Google phone will have fully integrated GPS features. I’ve been holding back on taking the iPhone plunge until it has fully realized GPS capabilities (at which point it will also become the ultimate geocaching device).

But the cool thing is, you don’t have to wait for a GPS-enabled camera to start geocoding. Here are the results of my first geocoding experiment, created without a GPS-enabled camera. The icons are clickable; the thumbnails in the balloons are too.


View Larger Map

The photos aren’t great, the interface isn’t perfect, and due to several beginner’s mistakes, only some of the coordinates shown here are accurate. This was more a proof of concept than anything – a way to explore available software and techniques. You’d think generating a map like this would be trivial at this point in the game. Well… yes and no. There are a ton of options, but getting things to appear exactly the way you want them to is still a bit of a pain. Click through for the gory details.

I recently picked up an excellent (paper) map detailing 140 of Berkeley’s hidden pathways – concrete or wooden stairs covering the steep stretches between many of the twisting, heavily wooded streets of Berkeley. These were mostly built at the turn of the last century to help citizens without cars get to the local train systems. I recently explored a few dozen of the paths with my family, and started my geocoding experiment there.

(more…)

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Posted in Geo | 6 Comments »

December 19th, 2007

Magic Highway USA

So Tomorrowland wasn’t supposed to be a Disneyland-only thing? You have to wonder whether the Imagineers really did think we’d achieve this kind of transportation utopia, or were fully aware that they were projecting a full-on fiction.

The film seems to blur the line between futurism and science fiction (futurism being an honest attempt to predict). Technology that never arrived aside, one of the the most amazing aspects of this is the fact that it takes no account of the population explosion. These cars have the road as much to themselves in the projected future as they did when the film was made in the 1950s.

Thanks Jeremy

Music: The Clash :: Police & Thieves

Posted in Out there | 1 Comment »

December 17th, 2007

Spam Poster Art

Nogirls Thumbtack Press hosts a gazillion great pieces of indie art (whatever that means), available as posters. A friend tracked down this excellent collection of art posters made from common spam taglines. Also loved “Realize your dreams with our help for a short time.” How promising! Also: “This secret weapon will give more power to you little soldier.” Little soldier thanks you. See also: Spam Plants and Spamland.

Music: Leaders Of The New School :: Mt. Airy Groove

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December 16th, 2007

Real Good for Free

This week at Stuck Between Stations:

Me, on violinist Joshua Bell’s recent experiment playing in a D.C. subway:

Violinist Joshua Bell’s virtuosity is so renowned that Interview magazine once said that his playing “does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live.” A few months ago, Bell walked into a D.C. subway station, flipped open his violin case, and played his heart out for spare change — on a $3.5 million 1713 Stradivarius.

… Of course almost no one paid any attention. Context is everything, and we only hear what we’re prepared to hear. More on context, presentation, perception in the piece.

Music: Billy Bragg & Wilco :: The Unwelcome Guest

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December 16th, 2007

New Media Webcasts

Another week of interesting webcasts coming up at the J-School, mostly focused on questions surrounding the evolution of newsrooms – the integration and embrace of new and alien techniques and technology in the news gathering process.

The talks represent the public component of another digital media training workshop sponsored by the J-School and the Knight Foundation. We’ve greatly ramped up the number of workshops held each year – this topic is becoming critical to struggling newsrooms around the world.

Tune in live, or check back for archived versions.

Music: Wilco :: At Least That’s What You Said

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Posted in Work | No Comments »

December 16th, 2007

Does God Exist?

In the car with Miles yesterday, he suddenly chirps up: “Daddy, does God really exist?” As I’m formulating a response, he answers his own question with some flavor of techno-contemporary agnosticism: “I bet not even Google knows the answer to that!”

Indeed.

Of course, the same question WRT Santa is very much on his mind right now. It’s unclear whether he puts Santa and God on the same or different epistemological / mythological levels. I know he knows that not all grown-ups believe in God; I’m not sure he realizes the same about Santa.

I think he thinks that grown-ups do believe Santa is real – interesting that he would question God’s existence before Santa’s (I promise I’ve had no hand in that!), though I guess it’s understandable since he sees Santa all over the place. God, not so much.

Music: Wilco :: Spiders

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Posted in Family | 68 Comments »

December 12th, 2007

reCAPTCHA

Fascinating project. The idea is that optical character recognition processes in place at the world’s largest book digitization projects naturally make lots of mistakes, and encounter plenty of computer-unrecognizable words – especially with older books or books printed with messier inks or using less-precise fonts. Rather than having staffers laboriously read every word of every book just to correct the clinkers, reCAPTCHA puts the hive mind to work, every time a member of the public solves a captcha.

About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that’s not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into “reading” books.

I’m going to replace a few captchas I’ve got in place at the J-School with reCAPTCHAs. I’d been meaning to add audio accessibility to them anyway, and reCAPTCHA has an audio option built in. Being able to contribute to book digitization is delicious gravy.

Update: Adding this video thanks to Jeremy:

Music: Gary Wright :: Our Love Is Alive

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Posted in Web Dev | 4 Comments »

December 11th, 2007

Gutting a Display

Sdisplay-Repair5 Amy uses a 17″ Studio Display attached to a Mac Mini. Recently she found the top half of her screen going dim (pretty much unusable for photography work), and the power light flashing in a two-short, one-long pattern. Goog took me to a page on the Studio Display Backlight Problem. Looks we had a dying power inverter, right from the textbook. Ordered a replacement from MoniServ, which arrived a few days later.

After dinner tonight, Miles and I dove into the repair (he got to work the allan wrenches and screwdriver, and to unplug/re-plug the connectors). “This could go one of two ways: Either it’ll work perfectly and Mommy will consider us both heroes, or will fail miserably and we’ll get an earful about how nothing in this world has lasting value anymore.” Took our time with it, and the whole process turned out to be very easy – done in half an hour.

Monitor’s like new again. We’re heroes!

Music: Brian Eno :: Sky Saw

Posted in Geek, Mac | 2 Comments »

December 9th, 2007

Miles Davis Is Dead

In The Bone Room with Miles today, Christmas shopping. He’s fascinated by everything there, of course, but flips when he sees the full-size human skeletons. Arms outstretched, revelation in his bright eyes, he points to one and calls out loudly:

“Oh my Goss, Daddy, look! That must be Miles Davis!”

I laugh. “It could be, but why do you think it has to be Miles Davis?”

Arms stretched wide, look on his face like I’m a compleat idiot: “Well, Miles Davis is dead, isn’t he?”

Music: Canned Heat :: On The Road Again

Posted in Family | 2 Comments »

December 8th, 2007

Statistics and Suffering

Not sure what to make of this Der Spiegel piece on how statistics of death and deformity are consistently overrated after nuclear accidents. Upshot: real rates of destruction are generally far lower than popularly reported.

To answer these questions, the Japanese and the Americans launched a giant epidemiological study after the war. The study included all residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had survived the atomic explosion within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius. Investigators questioned the residents to obtain their precise locations when the bomb exploded, and used this information to calculate a personal radiation dose for each resident. Data was collected for 86,572 people. Today, 60 years later, the study’s results are clear. More than 700 people eventually died as a result of radiation received from the atomic attack:

  • 87 died of leukemia;
  • 440 died of tumors;
  • and 250 died of radiation-induced heart attacks.
  • In addition, 30 fetuses developed mental disabilities after they were born.

Even sites like Nature News say Chernobyl’s ecosystems are “remarkably healthy” and that “biodiversity is actually higher than before the disaster.”

My initial reaction is that this is an incredibly skewed, twisted perspective – some flavor of (possibly unintentional) historical revisionism. Or that data simply conflict, and different reporters pick and choose their angles. Yet the piece is very even-handed, doesn’t seem to be written with any kind of pro-nuke agenda, more a commentary on how exaggeration commonly follows on the heels of tragedy. But I’d like to see a rebuttal or response to this article written by other science journalists.

And then… stop. Just. Stop. It’s madness to talk this way.

Chernobyl

Watch Paul Fusco’s photo essay on victims of Chernobyl, and their children. And remember that everything beyond these messed up human lives is just statistics. And that death rates are very different from suffering rates. And that statistics are just damn lies anyway. And that people are real. Suffering is real, and cannot be reduced like this.

Thanks Jim Strickland

Posted in Environment, Media | 7 Comments »

December 7th, 2007

What Happened?

Mcoldtreeandsunsetatkin T180 When CCDs go bad, accidental digital beauty. This reminded me of a series I stumbled across on LJWorld several years ago — the gorgeous results of having dropped a camera into a pond. Wonder how often people have this kind of accident and find themselves suddenly blessed with a “magic camera.” The only time something similar happened to me was when I was trying to shoot raindrops hitting the surface of the ocean in the middle of a tropical storm in Jamaica. Enough ambient moisture entered the camera body that everything it shot for the next few hours was distorted and smeary – not quite accidental beauty, just bad. And it cleared up by the next morning after leaving it open to dry overnight. Hmmm… I can find a few on Flickr, not nearly as many as I’d expect. Now I want to find a cheap/used digicam just to drown it.

Music: Tom Waits :: Murder In The Red Barn

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Posted in Out there | 2 Comments »

December 7th, 2007

Publishing Frontier

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes two great new media blogs:

pubfrontier.com: A raucous public discussion of the publishing revolution with an all-star list of contributors. “The goal of our site is to conduct provocative public discussion of the revolution that is happening in publishing and how it effects readers, society, economics, and fundamental values such as privacy.”

aliceinradioland.org: The blog portfolio of Pauline Bartolone — multimedia storyteller, radio producer and investigative reporter.

Music: Steve Coleman And Five Elements :: Twister

Posted in Hosting, Media | No Comments »

December 6th, 2007

Oobox

David Pogue, in the NY Times:

These are all actual Web sites that have hit the Web in the last year or so: Doostang. Wufoo. Bliin. Thoof. Bebo. Meebo. Meemo. Kudit. Raketu. Etelos. Iyogi. Oyogi. Qoop. Fark. Kijiji. Zixxo. Zoogmo.

And these are names coughed up the Domain and Company Name Ideas Generator:

Cojigo. Roombee. Kwiboo. Trundu. Oobox. Ceelox. Myndo. Ababoo. Vible. Yambo. Eizu. Twimba. Yanoodle.

So… are startups today really using a randomizing algorithm to poot forth their brand identities? Or are humans sitting around board room tables coming up with names that only end up sounding randomly generated? Either way, these name forms are only memorable when they’re alone in the field, like Google. When there are dozens of them, all recognizability is lost.

Music: William Parker :: In Case of Accident [Live]

Posted in Geek, Out there | 7 Comments »

December 4th, 2007

You Got Beacon’d

Felt like I needed to do something different last Saturday. Didn’t want to work on the house, didn’t want to work on the computer, too cold for hiking… decided to make a double batch of beef stew. Decided to save it to my “recipe box,” which required setting up an Epicurious account. Little did I know that a few minutes later, half the people I know would know that I was a new Epicurious user, via Facebook.

Beacon

Been hearing a lot about Facebook’s Beacon functionality over the past week, but it felt utterly yicky to get Beacon’d myself. Not that my chosen beef stew recipe was any great secret, but didn’t expect that a simple account signup was world news.

If I had known that Epicurious was one of Facebook’s 44 Beacon partners, I probably wouldn’t have done it. If there was an interface cue warning me about it, I probably looked past it. We’re so used to whipping quickly through such mundane tasks that we don’t exactly read our EULAs or every word on every page we visit. And Beacon is apparently even more insidious than it appears on the surface:

According to the researcher, Facebook’s Beacon tracked the activities of users even if they had logged off from Facebook and had declined the option of having their activities on other sites broadcast back to their friends.

Controversy over Beacon is swelling by the minute, but apparently Facebook isn’t alone in the practice. There may be a silver lining to the mess:

The controversy raised by the social networking site’s use of the Beacon technology has helped drag into the open the widespread but hitherto largely hidden problem of online consumer-tracking and information-sharing, according to privacy advocates. “This Facebook debacle is in one way very good, because it shows people just what is happening,” said Pam Dixon executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “There are other sites and other places where very similar data arrangements exist, but it is all happening under the radar and people simply don’t realize it.”

I feel gross all over. But the beef stew came out great.

Update: Facebook caves, will allow users to turn off Beacon.

Music: William Parker :: Long Hidden, Pt. 3

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Posted in Geek | 2 Comments »

December 3rd, 2007

Want a Danish?

This week at Stuck Between Stations:

- Me, on Van Morrison’s 1967 contractual obligation, in which he “mails it in” like no one has ever mailed it in before:

I can see by the look on your face
that you’ve got ringworm.
I’m very sorry to have to tell you, but you’ve got ringworm.
It’s a very common disease.
You’re very lucky to have … ringworm
because you may have had … something else.

Audio at the site.

- Roger, on the unlikely roots of Jamaican reggae and soul in Canada.

Canadian reggae and soul, eh? If you expect that combination to go down as easily as curried goat with a side of Canadian bacon, you may be surprised.

Posted in Music | No Comments »

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